9 Easy Ways to Make Money While You Sleep
Nothing can quantify that amazing feeling you get when your money keeps rolling in even while vacationing, sky-diving, on a date, or even sleeping! Billionaire entrepreneur Warren Buffet once said, “If you don’t find a way to make money while you sleep, you will work until you die.” But are there really ways to make money while you sleep?
Of course! If you can trade in your time for money, you can actually put in the effort that will keep the money flowing even when you are idle. Just imagine you went to bed at night and woke up the following morning to some huge bank credit alert. It might seem unreal if everything you know everyone else to have done is to get paid per hour, day, week, or month of work.
There are easy ways to make money while you sleep, and these ideas are very potent even in the new 21st century.
1. Create an eBook or blog
Self-publishing has become a goldmine in today’s world. Techjury reveals that an estimated 600 million blogs currently exist on the internet. That’s huge! And unlike the traditional publishing method, online publishing has massive ways of drawing in cash for publishers.
The beauty of this approach is that making money is far easier to do. If you enjoy writing and have access to a computer, you’ll definitely not find self-publishing a hard thing. There are also tools and platforms that can make your writing less cumbersome. You can also hire skilled writers to do great writing for you.
Create an ebook that is focused on fascinating interests – make proper research before starting. Add a very appealing cover art that can help sell your book and leverage on free and paid platforms that can help you get your new online book to a huge market base.
Platforms that can help you sell your eBook include Amazon Kindle, Payhip, Scribd, Smashwords, E-Junkie, Payloadz, Feiyr, and a host of others. Bloggers can earn through affiliate marketing, selling their online products, advertising networks, membership subscriptions, sponsorships, and more.
2. Invest in stocks
If you have some good money to invest, then consider stocks. While no stock has a 100% guarantee, they are generally considered safe, especially with a smart approach to them. Nerdwallet published a guide that can be of help to your stock investment.
Investing in stock simply involves buying little shares of companies’ ownership. The small shares are regarded as stock, and when you invest in them, you invest with the hope that the company would grow and do well over a good period of time to yield considerable income to you. When the company becomes increasingly valuable, you’ll find other investors that will be willing to pay a much higher amount to buy the stocks from you.
3. Get royalties over your work
Royalties are payments received by an author or composer over the use or sales of a book, music, or other intellectual work, for the right to continuous use of the asset. If you are an author of a book, you may find a publisher that will be ready to publish your work and will pay you a percentage of the sales made over the work. The percentages you receive over this intellectual work of yours are called royalties.
This stream of income is quite unpredictable because you may not find it easy getting a publisher or another company that is willing to sell your creative work. In addition, your earnings may eventually be some very negligible amount – like a few cents over a $10 sale.
Lastly, your payment, especially on book publishing, may only come after about half a year (6 months), and only when you have out-earned any advance – a kind of loan that must be paid back first before you are eligible to receive your payments – that you might have been offered.
Self-publishing is another option to consider as you’ll be entitled to higher royalty rates of between 30% to 70% every month. No advance is applicable here, and you’ll have to be responsible for the costs of editing and other requirements, but you are likely to still find it more profitable.
4. Make money as an affiliate marketer
Affiliate marketing involves helping other people to sell their products or referring potential customers to a company product or service for a predefined commission. Some of the popular companies with affiliate programs are Amazon Associates, Clickbank, Shareasale, CJ Affiliate, eBay Partners, Rakuten, and Shopify.
When you sign up for your preferred affiliate program, you’ll receive an affiliate identity that will be inserted in every product link you use to send referrals to the site. When your referrals make a purchase on the site through your link, you’ll receive a commission over the sales. As an affiliate, you can use almost all online channels to drive customers to the company you’re affiliating with through the provided product links.
You can create blog posts with product links to the company website, or consider leveraging your social media audience, or email lists, and several other avenues. Commission rates often differ from product to product and company to company.
As an affiliate marketer, there is no limit to what you can earn. You can also earn money while sleeping or doing other things.
5. Create an app that solves a problem
There are millions of apps out there solving different problems for people already. And if you have good design and coding knowledge, you can create your own app too that will help people sell their products, solve mathematical problems, make a budget, stop an addiction, or learn something new.
Your app can be made available on different platforms such as Android, iOS, and PCs. And if it does very well with some premium features, you’ll be cashing out every time of the day even without necessarily doing anything more. But it is important to give people some level of free access to the product to see the potential it has for meeting their needs.
6. Rent out free space in your house or apartment
You can earn money on the free space available in your room or home. Airbnb is one of the widely known platforms for renting out space to visitors for some cool cash. And depending on the city you reside in, the kind of space you are letting out, and also how often space will be available for rent. You can make money while you sleep or on vacation.
You may also simply want to rent out a room as a storage unit instead of welcoming guests around your home. Consider other sites like Apartments.com, ForRent.com, ParkingSpotter.com, and Craigslist.
7. Open a high-yield savings account
High-yield savings or certificates of deposit (CD) can help you generate a continuous stream of income over your savings. You’ll receive about 0.01% interest from a standard savings account, but high-yield savings can generate interest rates exceeding 1%. That is a 100% increase!
There are some accounts that will have you lock away your money for high-interest rates over a specific period of time. But before you consider an account that you will not be able to access, ensure that you put in place an emergency savings account that can be accessed at any time.
8. Sell printables that are highly on demand
Are highly skilled in graphic design or photography? You can create classy photos or designs that will resonate beautifully with physical objects such as t-shirts, hats, backpacks, and any other thing. Sell them online.
There are websites that are great for finding clients’ digital products such as your print materials. Printful, Zazzle, Shopify, Spreadshirt, CafePress, and Etsy are sites that you can consider to sell your print materials.
With great print-in-demand, you will consistently earn money even when you’re sleeping, on vacation, or doing other things.
9. Start dropshipping
Dropshipping is a system of selling products without having them in any physical store. You simply purchase an item from a third party and ship it to a customer that has made a demand for it. You do not also have to know the customer physically to make sales.
Dropshippers supply everything necessary and your own part is simply to market the product to your own audience. You can leverage on popular sites like eBay and Amazon fulfillment programs. With dropshipping, you can also sell customizable items such as mugs, t-shirts, and several others.
Be aware also that most dropshipping involves making orders for products from other countries or continents to be sold to customers in other parts of the world. And since you may not have had direct contact with the products, there may be issues with quality control, and you may be totally oblivious of the conditions the sold items were made under. So, it is important that you find a company that has a good reputation for your dropshipping goals.
Working for every cent you earn isn’t a long-term path to financial freedom. Combining passive income streams can make your currently saved money continue to work for you, and produce repeated income, helping you build wealth over time.